BANGKOK, Thailand -- Rich or poor, king or commoner, when some Buddhists and Hindus die their funeral can include bending the corpse into an upright fetal position, or burying the body and later burning the bones in a "double funeral".

Buddhists and Hindus hope to ensure the best possible reincarnation, and eventually escape the cycle of rebirth to achieve nirvana.

Many of Cambodia's traditional rites appeared during week-long ceremonies in the capital, Phnom Penh, when former king Norodom Sihanouk was cremated in February.

Sihanouk was entitled to have an elaborate royal cremation, but had indicated preference for a simpler, albeit relatively grandiose, funeral.

"Before King Sihanouk, the body of a [previous] deceased king, with the help of [cotton] strings, was put in the position of 'a fetus in the mother's womb' and the body was put in a big urn," said Ang Choulean, a professor at the faculty of archeology in the prestigious Royal University of Fine Arts in Phnom Penh.

"The height of the urn was shorter than the size of a human being, because the body of the dead had to be bent, like a fetus in the

We are now within two months of what may be humankind’s most dangerous moment since the Cuban Missile Crisis.

There is no excuse for not acting. All the resources our species can muster must be focussed on the fuel pool at Fukushima Unit 4.

Fukushima’s owner, Tokyo Electric (Tepco), says that within as few as 60 days it may begin trying to remove more than 1300 spent fuel rods from a badly damaged pool perched 100 feet in the air. The pool rests on a badly damaged building that is tilting, sinking and could easily come down in the next earthquake, if not on its own.

Some 400 tons of fuel in that pool could spew out more than 15,000 times as much radiation as was released at Hiroshima.

The one thing certain about this crisis is that Tepco does not have the scientific, engineering or financial resources to handle it. Nor does the Japanese government. The situation demands a coordinated worldwide effort of the best scientists and engineers our species can muster.

Why is this so serious?

Now that public pressure has foiled U.S. plans to bomb Syria, the next urgent step is to build public pressure for stopping the deluge of weapons into that country.

Top officials in Washington are happy that American “lethal aid” has begun to flow into Syria, and they act as though such arms shipments are unstoppable. In a similar way, just a few short weeks ago, they -- and the conventional wisdom -- insisted that U.S. missile strikes on Syria were imminent and inevitable.

But public opinion, when activated, can screw up the best-laid plans of war-makers. And political conditions are now ripe for cutting off the flow of weaponry to Syria -- again giving new meaning to the adage that “when the people lead, the leaders will follow.”

Five years after the beginning of the financial collapse and the Great Recession, where are we? This week, President Obama offered Americans a progress report. He hailed the steps taken to turn the economy around and rescue the auto and financial industries. He used the occasion, sensibly, to challenge Republicans in the Congress not to do more damage to the slow recovery by manufacturing another unnecessary budget crisis.

The president was candid about how far we have to go. He suggested that the very trends that were destroying the middle class prior to the Great Recession have gotten worse. The wealthiest 1 percent has captured virtually all of the rewards from growth coming out of the recession, while most Americans haven’t experienced a recovery at all.

This isn’t an accident. The auto industry was rescued, and the big three are generating profits and beginning to hire more workers. The big banks were rescued, and are now bigger, more concentrated and more dangerous than ever.

But while the big boats were righted, too little was done for the boats on the bottom.

September 17th, 2013, Frack Free Ohio and local residents will launch a county wide campaign to ban toxic fracking waste in Richland County. This is an exciting project for several reasons. We are widening our successful local efforts of last year, anyone on the planet can participate and a digital campaign tool kit will be made available to other interested parties in the near future. We have decided on a multi-pronged strategy involving the following actions:
1. We will be presenting to the county commissioners at 10:30 am. Jed Thorp of Ohio Sierra Club will speak and then I will outline our desired actions. The primary ask is for Richland County commissioners to pass a resolution in support of Ohio HB #148 and Ohio SB #178, both of which ban toxic fracking waste in Ohio. This includes in-state and out-of-state waste and would effectively: Ban Class 2 injection wells, road brine spreading and treated or 'recycled' flowback waste from being dispersed into treatment plants and waterways.